A floating 'separation wall' in Tel Aviv

floating-wall1.jpg

Israeli artist Shelly Federman created this curious structure that resembles the West Bank separation wall...  Except that it's made of Styrofoam and can be used as a floating mattress.

Federman's "Floating Wall" exhibit was filmed on the beach at Tel Aviv and set up as a video exhibit at the Art TLV biennial, a three-week-long happening that took place in Tel Aviv in September. The controversial piece, intended to draw attention to the "complex realities of life in Israel", was a centerpiece for the city's art show. Federman told FRANCE 24 what inspired her to create the wall, and how her fellow Israelis reacted to the exhibit.

 




Photos by Shelly Federman
Contributors

"Everyone at the beach identified it as the separation wall - it's our collective unconscious"

Shelly Federman is an Israeli contemporary artist. She lives in Tel Aviv.

I conceived this piece as a clear denunciation of the Israeli separation wall. I wanted to stress the fact that, in Israel, the possibility of being able to relax on the beach comes at the price of another people's suffering. It's addressed mainly to an Israeli public: to live a carefree life, people have to forget about the other side - the exhibit was a reminder of the high price of their fun on the beach.

We set up the wall for one day on the beach at Tel Aviv, just long enough to shoot footage for the video exhibit. I didn't have official authorisation, so I half expected us to be thrown out, but we weren't. I set up the wall at the end of the beach, at the border with the Arab neighbourhood of Jaffa, to spark as many reactions as possible. One thing was very surprising: absolutely everyone identified it with the separation wall. Even though it's a very simple structure and could be any cement construction, the wall immediately sprang to people's minds - it's rooted too firmly in our collective unconscious.

Curiously, Israeli Arabs were much more comfortable with the wall than Israeli Jews: they asked to play with them, to go in the water with them. Jews were very uncomfortable. The day after the exhibit started, there were several articles about the piece in Israeli media. There were hundreds of reactions online, and some were very nasty. The truth is, Israelis have grown too comfortable with the wall, because it has in fact helped, in terms of internal security. They just don't want to think about it too much.

At the Tel Aviv art show, I intentionally laid the blocks down next to the video exhibit. People were tempted to lie on them, children played on them, but at the same time it was a disturbing image, which generated conflicting feelings. Some women walked on the wall with their stiletto heels, thinking it was made of concrete. It made holes that looked just like bullet holes, making the piece even more realistic."

Shelly Federman's picture

Shelly Federman

  • Israel
  • Artist

Comments

she was a smart enough

I think that she was a smart artistic ,she show the world how this wall is unwanted from the some of the Israeli people .

Hibo's picture

Hibo

  • Libya
  • social seresv

A floating 'separation wall' in Tel Aviv

In the end, it is highly emotional and sad that the denial of Israel's existence by contiguous countries and the arab political and religious world at large coupled with relentless murderous attacks on their part since 1948 has forced the horrible reality of this wall, a wall that brings temporary relief but does not alleviate mental anguish that one is not safe. Finally, the fact that art is dedicated to the subject of war is equally emotional and sad - Picasso's Guernica is not a fun painting to look at -and this art is a temporary relief of mental anguish or brings it out in the open. So bravo to Shelly Federman.

Unregistered user

Israeli Palestinian problem

the Israeli Palestinian problem started in the early 40's and since many generations of Israelis and Palestinians have had their chance to resolve this problem.

till now none have succeeded but maybe, just maybe we need more people from both sides critical to the main stream ideas.

if there's more and more of Shelly Federman on both israeli and palestinian side, i'm sure we'll see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Unregistered user

Love it

Too often it takes an artist to expose society's twin diseases; hypocrisy and tyranny.

All the better when you can do it in a day at the beach!

Thank you, Ms Federman.

Unregistered user

Interesting

If the choice was between a foam barrier wall and foam suicide vests w/foam body parts strewn around the beach, she definitely went for the better option. Perhaps they should have interviewed some former suicide bombers for their feelings about the wall? OH, wait...

Unregistered user

The great thing about Israeli society

The great thing about Israeli society is the ability to say what you think. I don't doubt that many Israelis have very mixed feelings about the wall. Ms Federman has put her finger on a touchy subject in a unique way.

Unregistered user

extraterrestrial opinions

Ms Federman is entitled to her foolish opinions and her insensitivity to Jewish human life. But many --probably most-- Israelis loathe what is called "smolanut" [= "leftism" but I avoid such words]. Her opinions are based on false notions of reality.

The French Communists in the early 1930s pitied the Germans and sympathized with German nationalist aspirations against French imperialism and the restrictions imposed on Germany [occupation of the Saarland, la Sarre, separation of Danzig and Memel from Germany, etc]. The French CP also championed the right of the various German-speaking populations to unite into one state. On this you can check out the French historian Georges Goriely.

Unregistered user

Actually, an

Actually, an "extraterrestrial" point of view would be one that all other Democratic nations condemn as inhumane and immoral, yet you alone hold as an unquestionable right.

Unregistered user

"democracy" & the Jews in history, especially WW2

You seem to be sitting in one of those democratically bigoted English-speaking countries, perhaps in the British Isles, and pontificating against those whom your forefathers pontificated against, holding themselves morally superior to the "Christ-killers" and "bloodsuckers," which is how they referred to Jews. Now Jews have built a wall that you find obnoxious. I wish that it had not been necessary to build that wall. But it was necessary, because Arab terrorists, believers in age-old Muslim prejudices against Jews, have been on a jihad against us. Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority gets billions in aid from the EU, individual EU states, USA, Japan, rich Arab oil states, etc.

The fact that the two states of the British Isles may be democratic does not change the fact that the people there are fed anti-Israel propaganda by their mass media, politicians, some trade union leaders, intellectuals, churchmen, etc. against Israel, which is a new version of your old Judeophobia. You do not get the facts from your media, so you cannot make a proper judgment about what happens in Israel. Hence, it does not matter if your form of govt is democratic or not. You can democratically make bad decisions since you are ignorant. You can be democratically bigoted.
Don't forget that the UK was a silent partner in the Holocaust and that Eire had many people sympathetic to the Nazis. The Arab nationalist movement was pro-Nazi. Moreover, the chief Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini spent most of the war years in the Nazi-fascist domain, urging the Germans and their allies to kill more Jews. He even helped organize a Muslim SS division in Bosnia --the Handschar-- which massacred Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. The basic attitude of the Palestinian Arab leaders today is about the same as Husseini's was. But today they are much more sophisticated in their ability to appeal to Western public opinion. Too many news outlets overlook the call to genocide in Article 7 of the Hamas charter. That is, even when Arab jihadists are explicit about committing genocide against Jews, this Arab-Muslim frankness is regularly overlooked by the media.

Bear in mind that all of the Land of Israel ["Palestine"] was designated the Jewish National Home by the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations in recognition of the Jewish history in that country. However, the UK violated its mandate to foster development of the Jewish National Home by forbidding Jewish land purchases in most of the country in 1939 [the White Paper] and by severely limiting Jewish immigration during the Holocaust, when the Jews most needed a home. The zones where Jewish land purchase was forbidden included most of Judea-Samaria and the Gaza Strip. If not for those British-imposed prohibitions, Jews would have been a majority in those zones long ago.
The ignorance in Western countries about the real Israel and its history is an obstacle to peace. Big lies about Israel, like "apartheid," are war propaganda, not truth.

Unregistered user